Robert Maxwell asked Darryl Ponicsan:

My Navy bud and I -- both former Navy intells -- in mostly fighter squadrons and Top Gun at Miramar in the 70's (we're older) consider "The Last Detail" to be a modern classic. Sierra Hotel. Would you have some suggestions where to place Navy fiction nowadays? Not the rah-rah stuff but about sailors? rmaxwellvf154@gmail.com

Darryl Ponicsan The Last Detail is unique, as it turns out. I can't point out any current Navy fiction. The Navy itself has changed dramatically, but it was always changing. ("It used to be iron men and wooden ships; now it's the opposite.") When I was coming up it was "Mister Roberts" and "Caine Mutiny" and "Sand Pebbles." You can see the difference. A crew put together a stage adaptation, a musical, for the N.Y. play festival years ago and billed it as the "Anti-On the Town," which I thought was apt. (At a loss to read the semaphore Sierra Hotel.)

flag